I feel like everywhere I work, we have this term, and it’s become increasingly more common over the past decade as the USA becomes more and more hateful and aggressive towards the working class people… The offshore team. I really, really hate hearing about the offshore team. It’s from a certain country in Asia that starts with I But I have nothing against those people that come from that country, it’s simply out of concern for my well-being and my survival that it bothers me…
You look at a country like Germany, and how they have a workers council, and a country like France that has proper retirement, then you see the USA and how We have millions of computer science grads who struggle to find work, can’t get a job, universities churning out new students in the tens of thousands per year… We shouldn’t have an offshore team, at a company that makes billions of dollars, led by people that have so much money amassed up that they could survive for a thousand years spending millions.
It’s just embarrassing, that as a society, we are so horrible to each other.
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What really annoys me is when this becomes a racist thing. You get managers who love all ethnic Indians because they “are cheap and work hard” and then you get everyone else who now hate all ethnic Indians everywhere.
Indians CEOs of mega corpos was the best PR move owners ever did…
Idiots think that some sort of glass ceiling got shuttered when it was really PR to make Indians work harder since they too can be a CEO if they sell themselves cheap and work harder than the lazy Americans they are replacing.
The people responsible for your anxiety are not offshore, they’re upstairs.
I figured this would kick off again when work from home got implemented.
If your staff don’t need to report to an office, why pay them for a high cost of living when they can live anywhere? In person pay is going to drop to national or international averages since you don’t need them physically at a site.
My company is WFH but they tell me if I move more than a few hours drive from my local “hybrid” office it’s akin to quitting. My company is not alone in this.
Yeah, but a lot of companies laid out very poor WFH policies at the start of the pandemic.
I’m also expecting that some companies are willing to accept WFH if it means they don’t have to pay as much.
The company I work at is considering moving some/all of the “not business differentiating” work (aka boring or terrible yet still critical work) to teams in India. I agree with roughly colocating teams (by time zone. Working 12 hours apart from half your team isn’t practical). I disagree with the Indian teams taking all the bad/boring work.
It’ll only get worse. Part of being in the corporate world is seeing it normalized so much, but then also you won’t ever make a decent living unless you’re in the corporate world. We’re hurtling towards a cyberpunk dystopia, but there’s more than likely not much you individually you can do.
Even the major push for computer science you’re seeing is thanks to FAANG companies pushing for more students to enter the field, not to give them a better living, but to flood the market so this exact thing happens, too much talent so they can pay them less.
Find something, get paid, and make a living for yourself. Corporate world sucks, but we’re forced into it
The problem is that it is still relatively rare for someone to have the patience and attention to detail to be able to tell the computer exactly what they want from it. The fraction of people that have that kind of natural ability hasn’t changed that much, and it’s not really something you can train.
So while the schools are pumping out more grads, the average quality of those entry level junior engineers is going down, down, down.
This heartens me that there will still be a place those who can produce quality software. But the current situation is not going to do any favours for average software quality any time soon.
Edit: I want to clarify something. I think anyone can be trained to write computer programs. The natural ability I’m talking about is actually the ability to tolerate programming day in and day out, as an occupation.
Not to mention the fact that the qualifications and the ability to communicate complex concepts and information without issue (in the language used by the rest of the company on shore) are almost always extremely subpar.
Too often I’m asked questions and I give thorough examples and ask if it makes sense and get a “yes” back immediately and then the next day rolls around and I’m asked the same questions by the same people and am forced to repeat the process.
I’m told these contractors are seniors with 10+ years of experience but act like junior interns.
But hey, the c-suite sees the real incentives here! Cheap labor!
Germany has nearshoring. Anything that doesn’t require native level spoken German or isn’t physical or under some weird regulation that it has to be in-country, it will be outsourced to a country with a significant amount of German speakers like Slovakia, Hungary, Romania or Brazil (Blumenau).
I’m about to be one of those grads, career changing in my early thirties. Whoops. Got into Berkeley CS so hopefully that carries my foot into a door somewhere
I work with plenty of people from India. They’re pretty good at their jobs. They should be paid the same as us in the USA.
I don’t mind that they work on the other side of the world. I don’t mind them at all. I mind that the main reason why they’re hired is that my employer can pay them peanuts. They deserve better.
I’ve met and worked with Indians who either were born in the US or migrated more than 5 years prior.
As it turns out they are just like the rest of us. There is definitely some racial stereotypes at play.
You had to work with Indians to realize they’re just like us? 💀
We are biased even if we don’t realize it. Its not that I had some sort of hate or something like that. I just found working with them to be eye opening to me. I conscious level I could care less about race. The thing is everyone is biased because that’s how our brains work. You will subconsciously make assumptions which may or may not be truth. It feels better to work with people that look like you because that is a survival trait.
To answer you question I didn’t believe Indians were or were not hard workers. However, I have met people who hate the Indians because they are all the same. I myself was simply unconsciously biased. If I were given the choice between a Indian and a white guy I would likely choose the White guy for some non racial reason. Bias is very had to avoid and you may be completely unaware you are being racist. What also bothers me is when companies go out of there way to hire someone because they are a minority instead of hiring because they are the best. If someone hired me based on race or disability I would be put down to say the least.
I’ve had really good and really bad experiences with contractor companies from India. It’s truly hit or miss and more often than not you don’t get the same quality of code or commitment (contractor or not)
That said, I agree with pay. They work for cheap and it really hurts the industry here at home while helping the c-suite pocket more of the profits.
You missed the best part: it’s return to office to boost communication and collaboration… …by being in a call with the offshore team.
